The Lovely Start of 2025

2025

This year has been tougher than 2024. Last year sure had its moments but 2025 has been sticking it to me repeatedly. Not just in one area but in all areas of life I have been fighting hard. It really feels like death by a 1000 paper cuts.

It started last year where all of the travel in December tired me out in January, I also had to pay for a website for two years. Taxes came in February where I got destroyed, the market has taken a dip, I had to pay for car insurance that went up, and it has been a lot of expenses.

Illness

This year has just been littered with sickness. The first sickness was the worst. A baby cousin, barely two years old, was diagnosed with Leukemia. At this point, he is still fighting it, and currently in the worst of it but I pray that he makes it through it and is able to not even remember anything about this hard time. Hard to see children with sickness. The drive to the children’s hospital and walking through it was difficult to see. All of those families are going through hell at the moment.

Hard to see my girlfriend get sick. Thankfully, it was step throat, and immediately after she got the flu. On her way to the doctor, she also got a nail in the tire, so I had to go drive her around for a bit. Not an ideal way to spend a Friday afternoon. She also couldn’t eat leftovers, so I had to cook from scratch every night or go to pick up something every night and all the cleaning was my responsibility. You don’t know how blessed you are for luckily sharing the load of household chores until you do those things alone for dishes for two people, cooking for two people, making fresh smoothies just for her to take three sips of it and say she’s done. It definitely tired me out.

Random Expenses

Yesterday, I got to work early, spent 30 minutes late at work and on the way home my tire got slashed. I had no idea until my tire pressure showed a drop in pressure, so I pulled over, was looking for a nail, but the sidewall of my tire was blowing hot air at me. Super. I figured I had ten minutes or less before I was on the side of the road, so I made the journey. Couldn’t make it the whole way, I had to pull over to a gas station and pump it up as much as I could to take it the rest of the way. It was a fun day to sit in wait and pay $138 for a new tire. Thought 6:30-2:30 would be amazing but it turned out it was a 6:30-7:00 and I had a sub in my car hoping to put in a fridge. The worst part was losing half my sandwich.

The next two days in the week my alarm didn’t make any noise as I overslept twice in a row for work. The roads were clogged and two people made me slam on my brakes to avoid hitting them.

The stock market is also down, and I flew too close to the sun and got burned as random expenses have tried their best to bury me. Which I have been buried. I am well behind in my finances and need to replenish my emergency fund.

My car has begun to cause issues. It feels like in the last year, I had to pay over $1000 on vehicle related expenses for maintenance. The car is really beginning to show its age. Eight or nine years old now, and I could get about $10,000 for it. A new car would be about $20,000 more than that and unfortunately, I just blew through my emergency fund pretty harshly so I can’t afford a $20,000 extra payment. I would probably be looking at $500 a month for my payments. That might be a little bit too expensive for me.

I also have other goals coming up, also bigger rent payment. Several cost increases and just not much pay increases. $3000 for taxes and car insurance sank me. That’s a scary situation. I will have a few bucks coming in from my various side hustles, but I am still barely afloat right now. Luckily, I had an emergency fund. Luckily, I am prepaid on all of my vacations so now, it should be all upsides. Famous last words, as I had to pay for a tire. I wasn’t planning on that in my budget. This also brings another cost to the vehicle as I had to buy a new tire, buy a new battery, and buy new brakes for my vehicle as it putters into 100,000 miles. The random expenses have been annoying for sure. I had to put a pause on investing even in a bad market. As I try to work my buffer up. I am starting my HSA in a down market which makes me happy. That investment does drop my pay down about $200 a month but tax-free gains is always nice.

Weight Gain

With the business of my life, I have been eating out a lot more. Which has led to almost ten pounds gained back. Ten to fifteen pounds away from the highest weight of my life. All of the work I put into losing that weight has been crashing down in a few months.

It hasn’t been a successful year. I would say that it exists in every area too. I feel like I can finally start to turn it around now. The travel has stopped. The vacations are prepaid. The only big expense on the horizon is car insurance for another $1000 in August. Life is beginning to slow down, and the good thing is at least financially is still maxing out my Health Savings Account. I have also been able to take a great vacation already so that is nice. I got to see snow for the first time. I have also completed a marathon. Not everything is bad. Still plenty of blessings to be thankful for.